Beamed out of Berlin, welcome to the blog I've been calling "Post-Google" since 2005.
I don't post too often anymore and the things I do post are written at odd hours or on my morning commute. This is not fine writing, these are in no way essays - just sketches of thoughts. Works for me.

"I'll send you a link."

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

"America is an "empire of bases," he writes, with a network of vast, hardened military encampments across the earth, each one a match for any Roman or Raj outpost. Official figures speak of 737 US military bases in foreign countries, adding up to an armed American presence, whether large or small, in 132 of the 190 member states of the United Nations."

"The Romans often preferred to exercise power through friendly client regimes, rather than direct rule: until Jay Garner and L. Paul Bremer became US proconsuls in Baghdad, that was the American method too. Rome even took in the scions of their defeated peoples' leading families, the better to prepare them for their future as Rome's puppets; perhaps comparable are Washington's elite private schools, full of the "pro-Western" Arab kings, South American presidents, and Afri-can leaders of the future. Sometimes the approach backfired, then and now. Several of those who rebelled against Rome had earlier been sponsored as pliant allies; their contemporary counterparts would surely be Saddam Hussein, a former US ally against Iran, and the one-time CIA-funded "freedom fighter," Osama bin Laden."

3 Comments:

Am I to understand from this post that Adam is out of jail? Is he the one who emailed you? I want to send news of his arrest to BoingBoing -- especially since it has received no mainstream Internet coverage -- but first I need to know what's going on.

About Me

sharp like play-doh...
This blog began in Seattle in 2005 and relocated to Berlin in 2006 where we still are to this very day.
QUOTES OF THE FORTNIGHT:"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain